The formal session ended without further incident, but the real business of the accord, I quickly learned, happened afterward, in smaller rooms where the packs most affected by a given issue were expected to hash out details the full assembly had no patience for.
Roman found me during the final recess, his expression carrying the particular weight he reserved for news he knew I wouldn’t want.
“The rogue activity along the northern corridor,” he said.
“It sits between Hellfang and Dreadmoon territory both. The mediator’s proposing a joint patrol agreement, shared intelligence, coordinated response. It would require direct communication between our packs going forward. Regularly.”
“Meaning what, exactly.”
“Meaning you may end up the one handling it, if I have any say in who represents us.” Something apologetic crossed his face.
“You know that corridor better than anyone else in this family. You crossed it yourself, five years ago. And Killian’s temper isn’t suited to sustained diplomacy with Hellfang specifically. Mine isn’t much better.”
“You want me negotiating rogue patrol logistics with Darius.”
“I want you deciding whether you’re willing to. If you’re not, I’ll find another way to handle it, even if it’s clumsier.” Roman held my gaze steadily.
“This is your choice, Maeve. It has been since the day we found you. It still is.”
I sat with that for a long moment, turning over what it would mean to choose either direction.
Refusing meant admitting, at least to myself, that I still couldn’t handle direct contact with him — that five years of training and power and a family who loved me unconditionally hadn’t been enough to let me sit across a table from Darius and discuss logistics like he was simply another Alpha instead of the man who’d once decided I wasn’t worth keeping.
Accepting meant actually doing it.
Meant more moments like the courtyard, more of that old, stubborn pull resurfacing every time he said my name.
“I’ll do it,” I said.
“But on my terms. Not his.”
Roman’s mouth curved, something like pride settling into the line of it.
“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
The meeting was arranged for later that afternoon, a smaller room off the main hall, just myself, Darius, and a Dreadmoon aide taking notes for the record.
I arrived first, deliberately, and chose the seat that put the window’s light behind me rather than on me, an old habit Damien had drilled into every negotiation lesson he’d ever given — control what people can read on your face before they’ve even sat down.
Darius arrived a few minutes later, alone, and something in his expression when he saw me sitting there already, composed and waiting, told me the arrangement had unsettled him more than he expected.
“Maeve.” He took the seat across from me without waiting for an invitation, which I noted and filed away without comment.
“I almost didn’t.” I kept my voice level, professional, the same tone I used with skeptical elders and cautious allies alike.
“I’m here because the rogue activity along the northern corridor is a genuine threat to my pack, not because I owe you a conversation.”
Something flickered across his face, quick and swallowed almost as fast as it appeared.
“Understood.”
“Before we discuss logistics, I want to be clear about how this is going to work.” I folded my hands on the table, meeting his eyes directly, refusing to let the old pull in my chest translate into anything he could read on my face.
“You and I will communicate only regarding matters directly relevant to pack business. Patrol coordination, shared intelligence, border incidents. Nothing else.”
“Maeve—”
“I’m not finished.” I let the words land with enough weight that he stopped, visibly recalibrating.
“You will not attempt to contact me outside of formal channels. You will not ask my brothers or my father to relay personal messages on your behalf. If you have something to say to me that isn’t pack business, you will not say it at all, because I’m not interested in hearing it.”
He sat with that for a long moment, something working behind his eyes that I recognized, uncomfortably, as the same look he used to wear when he was choosing his next words carefully around the elders, back when I still believed that carefulness meant he was protecting me instead of managing me.
“I understand why you’d want that,” he said finally, his voice quieter than before.
“I do. But I don’t think I can agree to pretend there’s nothing left to say between us.”
“You don’t have to agree to it.” I kept my tone even, unbothered, the way Damien had taught me to sound when I needed to be immovable without raising my voice to prove it.
“This isn’t a negotiation. This is the condition under which I’m willing to work with you at all. If it’s unacceptable, I’m sure my father or Killian can handle the northern corridor instead, and you and I will never need to speak again.”
Something in his expression cracked slightly at that, a flash of something that looked almost like desperation before he visibly reined it back in.
“No. I’ll agree to it.”
“Good.” I opened the folder in front of me, shifting the conversation deliberately before he could find another angle to press.
“Then let’s discuss the corridor. Dreadmoon can commit patrols on alternating nights, provided Hellfang shares intelligence on rogue movement patterns your scouts have already gathered. I assume you have something more current than five-year-old reports.”
We spent the next half hour discussing logistics, and I watched him adjust, visibly, to the terms I’d set — careful, professional, none of the searching looks or half-finished sentences from the courtyard.
He was good at this part, I remembered.
Whatever else had changed in five years, he still had the instincts of an Alpha who understood strategy, and some old, buried part of me noted that with something that wasn’t quite fondness but lived somewhere in its neighborhood.
I didn’t let that part of me speak.
I kept my attention on the corridor, on patrol schedules, on the aide’s careful notes, and by the time we’d finished, we had a workable agreement that required nothing further from either of us beyond adherence to it.
“That should cover the immediate concerns,” I said, closing the folder.
“I’ll have my father review the final terms before we confirm.”
“Of course.” Darius stood when I did, and for a moment neither of us moved toward the door, some old gravity still pulling at the space between us despite every boundary I’d just laid down.
“For what it’s worth. I meant what I said earlier. About wanting to talk to you properly.”
“I heard you the first time.” I kept my voice level, refusing to let the request unsettle the composure I’d built over the last half hour.
“And I meant what I said just now. Pack business only. That includes this conversation.”
“It’s not pack business I want to discuss.”
“I know.” I held his gaze, letting him see exactly how unmoved I intended to remain.
“That’s why the answer is no.”
I left before he could respond further, and I didn’t look back once I’d crossed the threshold, though I felt his attention on me the entire walk down the corridor, the same weight I’d felt in the courtyard, familiar and unwelcome and entirely without power over what I did next.
I found Killian waiting near the main hall, his expression carefully neutral in the way that told me he’d been waiting to hear how the meeting had gone before he let himself react either way.
“How was it?” he asked.
“Productive.” I kept walking, and he fell into step beside me without needing to be asked.
“We have a patrol agreement. I set terms. He agreed to them.”
“And the terms held?”
“They held.” I said it with a certainty I felt fully, all the way down, for the first time since the courtyard that morning.
“He tried to push past them once. I reminded him they weren’t negotiable.”
Something like satisfaction crossed Killian’s face, quiet and real.
“Good.”
I didn’t say anything further, but I turned the meeting over privately as we walked, examining the shape of what I’d just done the way Damien had taught me to examine everything, honestly, without flinching from any part of it.
Five years ago, I hadn’t gotten to set a single term of anything that happened to me.
Darius had decided when to reject me, Astra had decided when I’d given enough blood, the elders had decided what my worth was measured against.
Today, in a small room with a closed door, I had decided exactly how much of myself Darius was allowed to have.
It wasn’t forgiveness.
It wasn’t reconciliation, and it wasn’t the kind of victory that undid five years of grief in a single afternoon.
But it was mine, entirely mine, built and enforced by my own hands, and for now, that was enough.